


Tilting at Millstones

by notkingyet



Category: Moby Dick - Herman Melville
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21841684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notkingyet/pseuds/notkingyet
Summary: Queequeg teaches Ishmael how to handle his harpoon.
Relationships: Ishmael/Queequeg (Moby Dick)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 83
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Tilting at Millstones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [paramountie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/paramountie/gifts).



It came to pass during one particular dog’s watch, whence Queequeg and I lounged upon the rigging beneath the mast-head—our watches always coinciding, for Starbuck was no fool, and knew better than to separate his harpooneer from his bowsman—that Queequeg bespoke of a particular desire of his; to whit, that he should teach me something of the skill of a harpooneer.

Having shipped aboard the Pequod with the intention of learning all I could regarding whaling, I quite naturally leapt at the opportunity to acquire a skill so particular to the whale fishery. To say nothing of how my acquiescence pleased my dear friend, who flashed a grin at me as he pulled me to my feet and directed me towards the ship’s rail. He threaded one arm through my elbow as he went and carried his harpoon in the other, that instrument never out of his reach aboard ship, nor myself, either.

As we crossed the deck, however, ducking and swaying out of our fellow watch-mates’ paths, a few reservations occurred to me. To whit, “Here, Queequeg? Now? Too hazardous, surely—I would spear a man by accident as easily as you harpoon a whale by design.”

Queequeg chuckled and shook his head. He explained that he would not have me fling his harpoon across the decks. He would have me fling it overboard, into the sea.

“At what, Queequeg?” I asked him.

“At the sea,” he replied.

“Yes, yes, I understand that—but at what in the sea, Queequeg?”

He gave me a rather blank look, as he had done when I’d attempted my amateur taxonomy of known whale species. After a moment’s thought, he said, “Water. Waves. When they kick up and turn color, turn blue to white, crash together…”

“Foam?” I suggested.

“Aye, foam! You will throw at foam.”

I raised my brow at him, then turned to peer over the rail towards the waves splashing against the ship as she plowed on through the sea. He had brought me to the starboard bow, almost at the very point where the Pequod began carving its path through Pacific sea. A great quantity of foam surged around us. One could hardly miss it.

Oh.

I fixed Queequeg with a shrewd look. 

Queequeg grinned.

His good humor proved infectious and I relented with a laugh. “Very well. Woe betide the foam this day. Hand me the harpoon, Queequeg.”

Queequeg would not give it over—not yet. First, he wished me to strip to the waist. Not so unusual aboard ship as it may seem on shore, though I did not understand why he wished it particularly of me here and now, and how it would help me harpoon the very spray. Still, I obeyed, pulling my shirt over my head and tying it about my waist as a sort of second belt for my trousers. I supposed Queequeg, having honed his talent in nakedness, thought nakedness absolutely necessary to an education. 

However, as I accepted the harpoon from Queequeg, I perceived his appreciative gaze roving over my bare chest and arms, strengthened by my return to the sea, and I began to suspect he demanded my dressing-down for aesthetic reasons, as well.

Returning to the matter at hand, I struck the pose I had so often seen Queequeg himself adopt in the bow of the whaleboat. The harpoon hoisted by my right arm above that shoulder, its aim steadied by my left hand, and its wicked barb pointed down at the surging foam below.

Just as I stood balanced upon the very precipice of throwing my dart, Queequeg laid hands on me. He began at my shoulders and continued on down my back to my waist and even so far down as my thighs to correct my stance with varying nudges, tugs, and caresses, like so much clay upon the potter’s wheel. A not unfamiliar sensation, nor an unwelcome one, for we had already spent a great deal of time learning how to wield each other’s harpoons belowdecks—but that story for another time. At present he at last he came up to fix my arms, then stood back to admire his work.

At his nod, I hurled the harpoon into the waves. Whether or not it struck the foam, only the foam may tell, for it heaved and swirled and coalesced and evanesced in such a confused tumult that no human eye could pick out the particular bubble burst by the harpoon’s prick. But I had noticed a particular wobbling motion in its launch, as if the harpoon felt uncertain of its wielder. This wobble snaked down the line, which Queequeg had tied off to the rail in absence of a whaleboat bucket to coil it. We both stood well clear of it; still, the whipping of its hempen tail gave me pause. At length it pulled taut—not so much the weight of the iron in the sea as the force of the currents dragging it alongside the ship. Then Queequeg laid hands upon it, and with a tilt of his head bid me do the same. Together we hauled it in, and he put the harpoon back into my hands still dripping brine.

Again I adopted his posture, again he corrected me, and again I hurled the whaleman’s javelin. It struck the water, we hauled it in, and the cycle began anew. At first the novelty of our work attracted the attention of our fellow watch-mates, but by the time my attempts numbered an even dozen, most had drifted back to their scrimshandering and knot-work. Still Queequeg kept me at it, as tireless a schoolmaster as any landsman in the profession, and did not relent until my shoulders burned with unfamiliar exertion that prevented me from raising the harpoon again under my own power. 

(Belowdecks he showed more sympathy, and put as much effort into working the knots from my back as I had put into knotting it up. As to how we entangled ourselves afterwards, I shall let the reader’s imagination divine.)

The next dog’s watch found me too sore to raise my arms, let alone the harpoon with them. The day after I fared well enough to climb into the rigging beside Queequeg and admire the horizon from this lackadaisical perch below the hoops and beam of the mast-head. We fell into free and easy conversation there, as we so often did, and I was in the midst of explaining my theories of loose-fish and fast-fish when Queequeg’s keen eye darted away from mine and fixed upon some point below.

Naturally I followed his gaze and found it ended at the starboard bow of the ship, where drifted an enormous pale mass.

No sooner had I espied it than I bethought myself of claiming the gold doubloon nailed to the mast-head and shot up to sing out for the white whale. But before I could open my lips to raise the alarm, Queequeg’s hand upon my shoulder halted any action on my part. I whirled to him for an explanation. He provided none, being already in the midst of climbing down to the deck.

After a moment’s exasperated impatience I followed, just as silently if less gracefully. He led me across the deck to the starboard bow, picking up his harpoon along the way. I peered over the rail alongside him. 

At closer range, the enormous pale mass resolved itself into a flat circle, as broad as a huzzah porpoise is long. Two flat fins sat on either side of one end of this pie-tin creature, flapping now and again with languid stupor, as if it soared over the waves like an albatross. Were it upright, these fins would resemble those of the most fearsome sharks. Yet I never saw it do else but drift along on its side, sunning itself in drowsy oblivion. I have seen sea-turtles flap their own fins in a similar fashion, though this thing appeared thrice as large as a sea-turtle, and furthermore, its enormous black eye, like a spot of coal in the wide round face of a snow-man, sat at the opposite end from its fins. An eye almost the size of my fist; indeed, almost the size of a whale’s eye.

A landsman might have identified the mysterious fish as an infant whale. Yet the Nantucket sailor perched up on the mast-head didn’t sing out for it, either. Perhaps this was due to his concentration upon the horizon for spouts rather than gazing fondly down at the ship striking through the waves, as I had oft done in his place. Or perhaps this was because this creature was no whale at all, and he, with his ancestral experience in the trade, had better sense than the common land-lubber. Regardless, a moment’s closer regard showed me why Queequeg did not sing out and prevented me from doing the same. It was no species of spermaceti, or indeed any kind of cetacean.

“Queequeg,” I asked, “what in Neptune’s watery embrace is that?”

“Rātāhuihui,” he told me. “Sun-fish.”

In retrospect the name seemed obvious, given the creature’s giant discus shape, pale hue, and its penchant for soaking up Apollo’s radiance. Since my time aboard the Pequod, I have learned this fish is known to the more scientific breed of landsman under the name _mola-mola_ , as _mola_ is Latin for “millstone,” which this dumb beast—enormous, round, and dull gray—greatly resembles. In my opinion it has much in common with Old Hickory’s wheel of cheese, both in appearance and behavior, but more of that anon.

As Queequeg and I talked over the sun-fish, the Icelandic sailor, overhearing our conversation as he crossed the deck and coming to stand beside us at the rail to watch the millstone’s progress, declared such a creature was known to him as the moon-fish.

The Dutch sailor, overhearing this declaration, likewise approached the rail to inform us that the Icelandic sailor erred, for this creature was, in fact, the so-called “swimming head.”

The Icelandic sailor asserted he had never heard such a foolish phrase in all his days at sea, and for some subsequent minutes neither sailor gained nor ceded ground in this quarrel. The noise they raised attracted still more curious fellows who wanted to know what had caused such a commotion, and soon very near all the dog’s watch had abandoned their skylarking to take sides upon the issue. The millstone floated on, oblivious to the controversy it had sparked.

“Is it good eating, then?” I asked them, raising my voice over their squall.

All turned to regard me, their argument forgotten. While none could agree upon its name, they were uniform in their judgment that the millstone should not—indeed, could not—be eaten. Even Queequeg grimaced at the suggestion.

“Very bad,” he assured me. “Covered in cold sweat and worms.”

“Fish don’t sweat, Queequeg,” I told him.

“Aye,” said one of the Nantucket lads, “but the sun-fish has a thick jelly coat all o’er him, and what meat lies beneath it is tough as clay. Not worth the time it takes to chew. Fit only to make your jaw ache and turn your stomach.”

“Nothing eats sun-fish,” Queequeg agreed. “‘Cept sharks, and too full of whaleflesh now to bother him.”

“Then why the Devil should I bother him?” I asked.

“Because,” said Queequeg, with such a schoolteacher air that I began to suspect he’d picked up more than a few of my own habitual mannerisms, “he will make a very good target for a harpoon.”

This, at last, I understood. The swimming millstone, as wide as Queequeg himself was tall, and drifting along no faster than the ship sailed, could hardly be missed even by an amateur such as myself.

“Very well,” I said, and began peeling off my shirt.

Queequeg called for all the assembled sailors to clear the way, at the peril of their lives. Doubtless he meant they should keep their distance lest I make a spectacular failure in my aim, though from the swiftness of their movements I believe some of them took him to mean that if they did not move willingly, he’d be happy to toss them aside as if they were so many harpoons themselves. 

I raised Queequeg’s harpoon over my shoulder—he made a few minor corrections to my stance—and, taking aim at the millstone, I hurled the harpoon down.

One may believe such a large target, moving so slowly, would prove impossible to miss. Alas, the millstone was not quite so wide as the broad side of a barn. The harpoon struck the foam some twelve feet further out to sea.

My shipmates hooted and hollered. I withheld a disappointed sigh and began hauling in the line. I expected to have but one shot at the millstone, for as soon as it understood it was hunted, it would doubtless swim away from its attacker, much as whales and seabirds and all dumb beasts will do—upon instinct, if nothing else.

Instead, the millstone didn’t so much as flinch. Whether hurled down or dragged up, the harpoon troubled it not. It drifted on beside the ship with total indifference.

“Why does it not flee?” I asked Queequeg when we’d pulled his harpoon in from the waves and he’d placed it in my hands once more.

He arched his brows at me. “I told you. Nothing eats it. ‘Cept sharks.”

“And I suppose,” I said, catching on, “that if it suspected any attack at all, it would expect an assault of jaws from below, rather than a dart from above.”

Queequeg seemed pleased to find me such a quick study.

By this time our hunting party had attracted interest from all corners of the ship. Tashtego took a particular interest, coming up to Queequeg to learn the cause of the commotion. Our plan, as we laid it out before him, gave him a great deal of mirth.

“Ishmael,” he said, laughing. “If you can hit that damned fish, I’ll eat it myself.”

“Which has the more flavor?” I asked him, with more confidence than I deserved. “Sun-fish or crow?”

Tashtego laughed again, clapped myself and Queequeg on our shoulders, and stepped back to give us room to work, hollering to make the rest of the assembly do likewise.

It did not feel very sporting to continue hurling Queequeg’s harpoon at such an unassuming creature, which had offered no insult to anyone in all its doldrum days. Still, I intended to become if not skilled with a harpoon then at least competent with it, and so I raised it up over my shoulder and hurled it down again.

The millstone did not blink—and why should it, when the dart flew well over its head?

I grit my teeth and hauled in the line for another attempt.

This strike likewise missed the millstone by more than a yard.

I am sometimes called a patient man, but this particular trial tested my patience near to its snapping point. Every attempt brought a failure, and every failure brought my shipmates’ derisive mirth. Yet worse than that, to my eye, was the millstone’s total indifference. It seemed to float on content in the surety that no matter how many assassinations I attempted, the harpoon would never make the slightest scratch upon its worm-infested flesh. It would lie there stupidly sunning itself until I fell down to the deck with exhaustion.

By the fifth failure, I loathed the dumb beast with all my heart. Was it this feverish, fruitless frustration that compelled our captain to chase the white whale? If I, a mere bowsman, could feel so much ire towards something that had done nothing save evade me without effort, I could scarce imagine the rage that must fuel a man who’d lost his leg in pitched battle with a far mightier foe.

Arm burning, chest heaving, ears ringing, I hurled that wicked dart at the blasted cheese-wheel of Neptune. Yet all my fury could not equal one drop of Queequeg’s skill. The harpoon dove into the ocean with hardly a ripple. Not even the line touched the millstone.

But as I hauled the line in for another try that I swore would prove my last, it did not come up so easily as it had before. Indeed, it seemed I hauled against another Ishmael beneath the foam who desired Queequeg’s harpoon as much as myself and wanted his own turn at the millstone.

I peered over the rail to see what the matter was—half-fearing my wide shot had struck our own keel—and saw only the as-of-yet unmaimed sun-fish, as aimless in its globular head as I as in my arm.

Queequeg, perceiving my hopeless struggle, added his own well-muscled grip to the line. Whilst I would not consider my own strength insignificant after years of nautical employment, I am happy to admit that Queequeg’s powers far outstripped my own—and yet, the line would come up but reluctantly, as if a score of mermen had seized hold of it for a tug o’ war beneath the waves. Queequeg’s noble brow furrowed as we hauled against the unknown force.

“Is the harpoon caught?” I asked him, deferring to his expertise. “But what could it be caught upon? Not the sun-fish, certainly—and not a shipwreck either, out here on the open sea. What, then?”

Queequeg answered my conjectures with a stoic shake of his head. Then sang out over his shoulder for the watching Tashtego to come to his aid, and Daggoo as well, the three harpooneers as united as a like number of musketeers. All heaved together and saw progress at last, the line coming up heavy hand-over-hand.

“Something in the water!” the Portuguese sailor called out from his position leaning over the rail to watch the proceedings. “A dark shadow!”

More hands joined the line, and at last with a mighty tug, our catch broke free of the waves. An instant later saw it pulled up to the rail, but not ‘til it flopped over the rail onto the deck did I realize what I had caught.

“Blow me down!” cried the Belfast sailor. “A shark! A shark!”

Indeed, for we had hauled in a mighty tigerish specimen of that breed, with sleek black sand-paper skin and fins as wickedly pointed as its teeth. From nose to tail it measured over five yards, its length more than twice the height of Daggoo. Usually when such specimens are brought aboard they thrash throughout their death throes and in some cases will bite well past their own demise. Yet this shark lay limp as a tame old sheepdog by the fire. The reason for this we found in its flat black eye. Queequeg’s harpoon had shot clean through it and lodged itself firmly in what little brain the beast had. An experimental kick to the harpoon shaft from the Spanish sailor forced a lash of the tail. Elsewise it did not stir a wink. 

I gaped at it in disbelief. By dumb luck, my final strike had missed the sun-fish altogether and instead caught the fearsome predator that had swum up beneath it—the shark, true to Queequeg’s word, being the only other thing upon the sea that would bother such a millstone as the moon-fish.

Tashtego laughed heartily. “I swore to eat your catch, Ishmael, and so I shall! Shark fin soup! Hear, Doughboy!” he called, turning towards the cabin to catch the ear of the steward. “Shark fin soup for supper, aye!”

I hardly heard him, or any of the answering cheers and jests from the rest of the crew—for Queequeg had swept me up into a congratulatory embrace that lifted my feet from the deck.

And a final glance over the starboard rail showed the millstone drifting on, undisturbed, untroubled, and content as any of us might ever wish to be.


End file.
